Rwandan refugee orphan boy heads for a new life in Norway

Refugee children from Rwanda at a camp in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Nicolas was given the chance to resettle from the DRC to Norway.

KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of the Congo, June 23 (UNHCR) – Nicholas* has spent most of his lonely life being moved from one substitute family to another. But earlier this month the six-year-old orphan flew to what should become his permanent home – the first unaccompanied minor to be resettled from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Norway.

The UN refugee agency had referred the young boy's name for resettlement and UNHCR staff were there last Wednesday to send him off from Kinshasa's N'Djili International Airport to join his new family in Norway. Nicolas, naturally, was apprehensive about flying on a plane and going to a new country.

But resettlement in Norway offers him a much brighter future than he would have in the DRC and he will finally get a family to call his own and to love unconditionally.

It has been a long journey; one that began years before he was even born. Conflict in the Great Lakes region forced both his parents to flee to the eastern DRC in the 1990s – his father from Burundi and his mother, Josephine,* from Rwanda, after her own father was murdered in front of her.

She wandered the country, spending some years in a centre for unaccompanied minors in Mbandaka, a city on the Congo River and capital of DRC's Equateur province. Nicolas was born in Equateur in 2004, not long after his father was killed in a hunting accident. He took his mother's Rwandan citizenship.

A year later Nicolas and his mother moved to Kinshasa. But she led a troubled life and the boy was often left in the care of Josephine's friends when she was in hospital or prison. In February this year, she died of disease aged just 27.

During her final stay in hospital, a student showed up with Nicolas and a small suitcase at the UNHCR office in Kinshasa and said he had been asked to look after the boy but could not cope. Many fruitless efforts were made to find a new family for Nicolas.

He was temporarily accommodated in a reception centre for children while waiting for a durable solution. That came when his request for resettlement was approved a few weeks ago.

His new family will find Nicolas to be smart, full of character, very active and inquisitive. During the preliminary interviews for his resettlement, he longed for the questions to end so that he could go back and play with his new friends at the reception centre.

When he was told he would be going to a place called Norway, he said: "But it is far! How am I going there?" When he was told he would have to go by plane, he thought it would be expensive and asked, "Who will pay? Is UNHCR going to pay?" If he keeps asking questions in his new homeland, he should go far.

In Norway he will have a direct link to his motherland. Also on the plane for resettlement in Norway was Sabine,* a 55-year-old dressmaker from the same village that Josephine came from in Rwanda.

The middle-aged woman and the child met during preparations for their flight to a new life and became close. Sabine took it upon herself to teach him about Rwandan culture and tell him stories about his country of origin. Nicolas is being resettled in the same city as Sabine.

There are currently some 80,000 Rwandese refugees living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to official figures. Since 2001, UNHCR has facilitated the repatriation of more than 94,000 Rwandese refugees from the DRC. Under a tripartite agreement signed last February, the DRC, Rwanda and UNHCR agreed to search for durable solutions for Rwandese refugees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and for Congolese refugees in Rwanda.

Resettlement from Tunisia's Choucha Camp

Between February and October 2011, more than 1 million people crossed into Tunisia to escape conflict in Libya. Most were migrant workers who made their way home or were repatriated, but the arrivals included refugees and asylum-seekers who could not return home or live freely in Tunisia.

UNHCR has been trying to find solutions for these people, most of whom ended up in the Choucha Transit Camp near Tunisia's border with Libya. Resettlement remains the most viable solution for those registered as refugees at Choucha before a cut-off date of December 1, 2011.

As of late April, 14 countries had accepted 2,349 refugees for resettlement, 1,331 of whom have since left Tunisia. The rest are expected to leave Choucha later this year. Most have gone to Australia, Norway and the United States. But there are a more than 2,600 refugees and almost 140 asylum-seekers still in the camp. UNHCR continues to advocate with resettlement countries to find solutions for them.

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Kigeme: A home carved from the hills for Congolese refugees

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Rwanda's Kiziba Camp was opened in December 1996, after the start of civil war in neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The facility was constructed to help cope with the influx of tens of thousands of Congolese refugees at that time. Some of the refugees have since returned to their homes in eastern DRC, but about 16,000 remain at the remote hilltop camp located in the Western province of Rwanda. Fresh violence last year in DRC's North Kivu province did not affect the camp because new arrivals were accommodated in the reopened Kigeme Camp in Rwanda's Southern province. Most of the refugees in Kiziba have said they do not want to return, but the prospects of local integration is limited by factors such as a lack of land and limited access to employment. In the meantime, people try to lead as normal a life as possible, learning new skills and running small businesses to help them become self-sufficient. For the youth, access to sports and education is very important to ensure that they do not become sidetracked by negative influences as well as to keep up their spirits and hopes for the future.

Keeping Busy in Rwanda's Kiziba Camp

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Emergency Resettlement – One Family's Journey to a New Life

After their family fled Syria, young brothers Mohamed and Youssef still were not safe. Unable to access medical treatment for serious heart and kidney conditions, they and the rest of their family were accepted for emergency resettlement to Norway.